A case management system implemented by the Crown
Prosecution Service (CPS) has led to a reduction in the number of
discontinued court cases - meaning more offenders are being brought
to justice.
In England and Wales, the CPS takes about 1.2 million cases to
court each year, ranging from violent crime to fraud. Effective
information management is essential for the CPS to do its job but
the task can be so onerous the system has struggled.
In 2001, the CPS Inspectorate found 1,800 defendants a year in
London were set free after serious charges against them were
dropped because the cases were not ready for court.
At the time, inspection of CPS London found "serious
shortcomings in casework, which were founded on weaknesses both in
procedures and systems and in management".
Since then, the CPS has implemented a new case management
system, which has received the green light from its fifth Gateway
review by the Office of Government Commerce. This final Gateway
review makes a government department or agency demonstrate the
impact of an IT system already in use.
Together with changes to working practices, the new system seems
to have produced the right results. In the past two years, the
number of discontinued cases fell by 19% and unsuccessful outcomes
in magistrates courts fell by 17%. Meanwhile, unsuccessful outcomes
in crown courts fell by 5% to 24%.
According to the CPS, efficient working and better quality case
preparation enabled by the functionality of the Compass case
management system have contributed to these improvements.
The Compass programme, developed in partnership with LogicaCMG
since 2001, uses technology to support CPS staff in bringing more
offenders to justice. The programme provides a national IT network,
desktop computer hardware and case management software tools to
some 8,000 CPS staff in 42 CPS areas throughout England and
Wales.
At the core of this programme lies the Compass case management
system, which was developed and implemented in 2003 by
LogicaCMG.
But more than any technical achievement or management metric, it
is the reaction of CPS staff that has proven the system is a
success, according to Claire Hamon, CPS director of business
information systems.
"The most significant sign of success is the fact that we have
got users referring to it as their system. I think that is very
important," she said.
Hamon said work started on creating this sense of ownership
right at the beginning of the project. The CPS surveyed the service
to find the level of IT literacy and the documentation of processes
in advance of the roll-out of the system.
It also involved groups representing the various professionals
within the CPS - including lawyers, case managers and
administrators - in designing and approving the case management
system before it was rolled out.
"We had a business-led approach from the outset," said Hamon.
"This is IT-enabled business change, working in partnership with
CMG."
User feedback had a direct impact on system design. "We piloted
the system for three months," said Hamon. "Before we rolled out the
national release we changed the system in response to the
pilots."
Training was another essential part of the programme. A mobile
training unit taught 7,000 people how to use the system before it
was introduced and users are unable to log onto the system if they
have not completed the training. The CPS also trained around 2,000
staff in basic IT literacy as part of the programme.
And the system continues to evolve. Because the CPS is
continually adapting to new legislation it must regularly update
the system. This provides an opportunity for further improvements,
said Hamon. "Now we are three or four releases in [because of
changes to legislation] each release contains new changes driven by
users' feedback."
By 2008 the CPS must meet the government target of electronic
information sharing across the criminal justice system, including
the police, courts, prisons and the probation service.
Although a pilot of a shared case management system between the
police and the CPS is under way in Humberside, the challenges of
national roll-out are much greater because police IT is managed by
each force, rather than nationally, said Hamon.
However, with the same focus the CPS has shown on including
users from the start, Hamon said he was confident of success on
this front as well.